Fool’s Assassin left me disappointed

A couple of weeks back I wrote an update which outlined what I’ve been reading as of late. In that update I said that when I finished Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb, I would go ahead and put together a review like I’ve done in the past.

Well, here’s the thing, I don’t wanna…

Before I started reading Fool’s Assassin, I was very excited. I missed the world of Fitz and was eager to visit once again. I even went as far as to pre-order the book. I very rarely do that, which should attest to how excited I was!

I began reading Fool’s Assassin and immediately felt comfortable. The world and voice were familiar, like an old friend. Things were a little slow at first but I knew they would pick up. I would just need to give the novel a little time to blossom.

After reading 100 pages, I was still waiting. After 200 pages I was sure the action would start after I finished the current chapter. After 300 pages I began to get annoyed. I would guess that it took somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 to 500 pages before anything happened that I could get emotionally invested in.

The first half of the book is filled with mundane day to day activities for Fitz (Tom Badgerlock) and Molly. Not only is a big chunk of the book dull, our beloved Fitz seems to have completely lost his edge. It almost feels like he has been dumbed down just so that the story could continue to move forward.

After finishing Fool’s Assassin, I headed over to Amazon and Good Reads to see what others thought. It seems as though I am in the minority but was not the only one left disappointed. One reviewer said something along the lines of “This novel is basically 500 pages of Prologue” and I agree with their assessment.

This book ends on a cliffhanger so I can only hope that the second novel in the trilogy gets into the action far sooner. I’ll most likely read it (since I’m so heavily invested with having read all the other Fitz novels) but I’m not very excited about the next release.